On Human Nature and Politics

[MaxGrit]

Confirms my original point.

You attempt to set the premise and define your political opponents based on your ideology.

That doesn't mean your conclusion is necessarily wrong. Communism IS bad. I agree with you. But you have demonstrated ideological bias throughout this thread by creating normative frameworks based on your philosophy.

You're human. Humans do that. Not just liberals.

I'm actually surprised....I've always found you to be truthful.

"Confirms my original point."

No....it does the opposite....it proves, via the actual words of Leftists icons that they believe that they can and will change human nature.


My point has been, throughout, that it cannot be changed and that it must be accepted but tamed.

Some philosophies may better describe human nature than others, but no one philosophy describes human nature in its entirety.

I gave an example earlier that Leftists do very much understand human nature by tapping into the very real need for safety and security and offering a welfare net. You can then argue that Leftists don't understand how that affects motivation, and I would probably agree with you. But that doesn't obviate the fact that the Left has created a system which taps into the deep seated human desire of survival.

Humans are born with sin nature. Sin nature causes humans to naturally want to sin thus naturally choose to sin.

All humans are sinners. All have sinned. All want to sin. All will sin.

 

[Erand7899]

Good for you.

Was Obama born in Kenya?

Such an asinine response only shows me how disingenuous your claim was. Do you really believe having an ideology entraps someone? Limits their understanding of the world? I feel sorry for you, my friend.

Humor me.

Was Obama born in Kenya?

The only people who knew for sure where Obama was born, are all dead. So, your guess is as good as anyone else's guess.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

I'm only going to address your last point. It is false. Thus, the premise of your defense of your own ideology is also false. There is no tautology that any ideology must be completely true.

That doesn't make it false, of course. However, if you look at the world through an ideological lens, you are less likely to come to the correct conclusion than an empiricist.

Most ideologues think they're empirical but most ideologues will also brush aside empirical evidence that contradicts their ideology.

Edit - And to clarify, this is not a relative argument. Empiricism is not relativism.

But I didn't argue anything as obviously stupid as "any ideology must be completely true" in order to be of any value, if I understand you correctly given your qualification tautology. I said that "one's ideology is either derived from the realities of existence . . . or it's not." The thrust of my observation is that no ideology is true, unless it faithfully reflects the realities of existence. That is true by definition, and I'm telling you that there is at least one such system of thought known to the world, in spite of your incredulity.

How did you manage to mangle that one, Mr. Empiricist?

Because you were unclear.

That you acknowledge "Realities of existence" are interpreted differently means that no one ideology has a monopoly on truth or on the interpretation of human nature. Ideology explains how things should be. That's fine. But no ideology has the definitive answer on everything. Ideology is a trap. It puts you in a box and limits your understanding of the world around you.

In spite of what some have alleged, all developmentally mature human beings are ideologues by nature. —M.D. Rawlings

(1) I wasn't unclear. You simply added something that wasn't there. No big deal. I've done the same thing. Look. The business of sound reasoning is tough enough for any one mind. Toss other minds into the mix and the difficulties are compounded. Terms must be defined. Logical errors must be acknowledge, and their offspring, discarded.

(2) It does not follow that there cannot be any one wholly truthful system of thought just because humans varyingly interpret the nature and the properties of existence. Non sequitur. The implications of your claim are at best the stuff of subjectivism and at worst the stuff of irrationalism, a.k.a. relativism.

The fact of the matter is that any number of varying interpretations could all be true at the same time. In such an instance, these varying interpretations would merely be a collection of viewpoints describing various aspects of the same staggeringly complex whole, various pieces of the same puzzle. This is not an uncommon occurrence.

On the other hand, real contradiction demands resolution in accordance with the universally absolute rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness and the laws of logic.

Your assertion in the above is missing indispensable qualifiers. Allow me to improve it: "no one ideology [necessarily] has a monopoly on [all] truth." Now, that statement is true.

(3) Ideologies that allegedly explain how things should be sans a reliable account of how things actually are, are worthless, and the only should part of a reliable system of thought would pertain to the disastrous results of trying to topple immovable objects. It is no small reflection on the sad condition of human nature that eight of the Ten Commandments of Judeo-Christianity begin with the phrase Thou shalt not. Embracing the cogency of these commandments is not merely the beginning of wisdom, but the first step down the road of humility that leads to the perfection of a broken and contrite heart.

But I digress.

(4) "Ideology is a trap"?! False tautology. Perhaps an ideology may be a trap for some in the sense that you mean.

An ideology is a systematically integrated body of ideas regarding the sociopolitical/cultural concerns of humanity. Period. An ideology may be wholly true, partially true or wholly false; and an ideology need not encompass all truth in order to be wholly true.

Adhere to the three classical laws of logic—the law of identity, the law of non-contradiction and the law of excluded middle—and you will avoid logical error.

(5) The universal components of human consciousness

The rational forms of human consciousness: the apparent dimensional, spatial and geometric aspects of existence.

The logical categories of human consciousness: the apparent, variously discrete substances and attributes of existence.

Neither the rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness nor the pertinent calculi of linguistics and mathematics are truth as such, and the laws of logic, which govern perception, thought and communication, do not so much as serve to divulge truth as much as they serve to expose error.

Or so it seems.

A literally comprehensive/exhaustive explication of existence resides beyond the ken of humanity. Sans an appeal to the existence of an omniscient Consciousness, the most that one may reasonably assert about the laws of logic is that they facilitate the process of identifying cogent constructs ideally bottomed on axioms. That is not the same thing as asserting that such constructs are true. For example, the recognition that either one of two diametrically opposed propositions is true and the other, false, or that they are both false, does not necessarily, objectively speaking, tell one what is true in any absolute, ontological sense. Do ya feel me? Rather, it tells one what to avoid, and that seems to work. As a matter of pragmatism, that's what we call truth coupled with the understanding that such constructs as the above are always subject to revision in the light of new information.

(By the way, in his Letter to the Romans, this is precisely what Paul is alluding to when he writes that "the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them . . . so that they are without excuse." In other words, God has equipped man to recognize the difference between ideas that are logically consistent and those that are logically fallacious. Hence, in the most rudimentary sense, sin is the rejection of logically consistent ideas in favor of those that are logically fallacious. Sin is irrationality. One sins when one acts on ideas and/or is driven by passions that are incompatible with the nature of things.)

So, with all due respect, Toro, your allegation (stated more coherently, as ideologies don't think or do anything) that the thought processes of human beings are necessarily inhibited by their ideologies is patently false on the very face it. However, to be sure, human beings routinely "brush aside" pertinent information about the nature of things that is not compatible with their ideologies. In the latter case, assuming that their interpretation of the pertinent information is reliably accurate, I would advice them to either revise or discard their ideology.
______________________________________

As for the pragmatism of concluding that God must be that one might confidently assert the recommendations of sound reasoning to be true in the absolute, ontological sense, insofar as the constituents of one's assertion are factual:

Copernicus, Bacon, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Boyle, Pasteur—all understood that the teachings of reveled religion and the inferences of scientific observation were not mutually exclusive, but mutually affirming sources of information about the same indivisible reality. They rightly held that divinity constituted the only guarantee that the rational forms and logical categories of the human mind were reliably synchronized with the apparent substances and mechanics of empirical phenomena. —M.D. Rawlings, Abiogenesis: The Unholy Grail of Atheism

And with the new information provided in the above in mind, I'll now further expound on a previous suggestion from another post:

I have a suggestion for you. Given the fact that empirical data don't interpret themselves and the presupposition of science is metaphysical, consider the advantages of a more pragmatic epistemology: toss the false rationalism-empiricism dichotomy out the window and adopt a synthetically balanced rational-empirical approach, albeit, as guided by, not detached from, the Mind of God.

P.S. Toro, I just realized that in one of my posts in the above I spelled elude, as in something that evades one, as allude. Prime example of the human condition. Don't get old, Toro. That's what happens to you. LOL!

 

[TemplarKormac]

Good for you.

Was Obama born in Kenya?

Such an asinine response only shows me how disingenuous your claim was. Do you really believe having an ideology entraps someone? Limits their understanding of the world? I feel sorry for you, my friend.

Humor me.

Was Obama born in Kenya?

He was born in Hawaii. But I see you weren't interested in debating me or M.D. seriously.

 

[Bush92]

By our very nature we will never live in the fantasy world of live and peace that liberals envision. We must not stand as part of the "world community" because that's what those who want to bring us down want. We are a great and powerful nation. We should look out for number1. Same applies to life. Why are my hard earned tax dollars going to support lazy people that have done nothing more than get pregnant?

 

[PoliticalChic]

By our very nature we will never live in the fantasy world of live and peace that liberals envision. We must not stand as part of the "world community" because that's what those who want to bring us down want. We are a great and powerful nation. We should look out for number1. Same applies to life. Why are my hard earned tax dollars going to support lazy people that have done nothing more than get pregnant?

"Why are my hard earned tax dollars going to support lazy people that" vote Democrat.



1. "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." - James Madison criticizing an attempt to grant public monies for charitable means, 1794


2. No republic has long outlived the discovery by a majority of its people that they could vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.
Alexander Tytler

 

[Jackson]

Thanks for nothing I want my 3 minutes of life back

IOW, you did not understand a word she wrote.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Thanks for nothing I want my 3 minutes of life back

IOW, you did not understand a word she wrote.

There's no shame in that. PC is the least coherent poster on the board, with the possible exception of Kosh, but PC wins because it takes her far more words to say nothing.

 

[Redfish]

Thanks for nothing I want my 3 minutes of life back

IOW, you did not understand a word she wrote.

There's no shame in that. PC is the least coherent poster on the board, with the possible exception of Kosh, but PC wins because it takes her far more words to say nothing.

the fact that you are incapable of understanding her words does not make them meaningless, it only shows your very limited mental capabilities.

maybe if all posts were limited to four letter words you might get some of them

 

[NYcarbineer]

IOW, you did not understand a word she wrote.

There's no shame in that. PC is the least coherent poster on the board, with the possible exception of Kosh, but PC wins because it takes her far more words to say nothing.

the fact that you are incapable of understanding her words does not make them meaningless, it only shows your very limited mental capabilities.

maybe if all posts were limited to four letter words you might get some of them

Okay, if you think you're so smart, and since I am in fact a liberal, then you explain, precisely, in detail, and supported by evidence,

what PC is accusing ME of in the opening of the OP:

Who would be more aware of human nature than ......human beings?
Yet, a large portion of the population is willing to remain oblivious to their own nature, or, at the least, to pretend to be unaware of same.

History reveals it....
Experience reveals it....

Liberals ignore it.

...and then, why she is correct in that accusation.

 

[NYcarbineer]

By our very nature we will never live in the fantasy world of live and peace that liberals envision. We must not stand as part of the "world community" because that's what those who want to bring us down want. We are a great and powerful nation. We should look out for number1. Same applies to life. Why are my hard earned tax dollars going to support lazy people that have done nothing more than get pregnant?

Your tax dollars go to helping the poor because more people want to help the poor than do not.

My tax dollars go to militarism and imperialism because more people want to waste money and lives on that folly than do not.

Life will never adjust itself to suit you perfectly. You are naive to believe that.

 

[bripat9643]

By our very nature we will never live in the fantasy world of live and peace that liberals envision. We must not stand as part of the "world community" because that's what those who want to bring us down want. We are a great and powerful nation. We should look out for number1. Same applies to life. Why are my hard earned tax dollars going to support lazy people that have done nothing more than get pregnant?

Your tax dollars go to helping the poor because more people want to help the poor than do not.

My tax dollars go to militarism and imperialism because more people want to waste money and lives on that folly than do not.

Life will never adjust itself to suit you perfectly. You are naive to believe that.

You mean democracy will never adjust to suit you. That's a good reason for disposing of it. People should be able to make their own decisions about which causes to fund.

 

[Agit8r]

Other views of human nature might be that people are basically good, or that human nature is plastic, and it only takes the right politics to perfect it. This is the view of communist governments, as Lenin expounded in the ‘New Soviet Man.’ Such governments have never worked, and, in fact, caused some hundred million deaths during the last century.

"Among the objects of the Constitution of this Commonwealth, Liberty and Equality stand in aconspicuous light. It is the first article in our Declaration of rights, 'all men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential and unalienable rights.' In the supposed state of nature, all men are equally bound by the laws of nature, or to speak more properly, the laws of the Creator:--They are imprinted by the finger of God on the heart of man."
-- Samuel Adams, to the legislature of Massachusetts (January 17, 1794)


"I am persuaded, that if mankind would dare to exercise their reason as freely on those divine topics as they do in the common concerns of life, they would, in a great measure, rid themselves of their blindness and superstition, gain more exalted ideas of God and their obligations to him and one another, and be proportionally delighted and blessed with the views of his moral government, make better members of society, and acquire, manly powerful incentives to the practice of morality, which is the last and greatest perfection that human nature is capable of."
-- Ethan Allan; 'Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man'


"Although I do not, with some enthusiasts, believe that the human condition will ever advance to such a state of perfection as that there shall no longer be pain or vice in the world, yet I believe it susceptible of much improvement, and most of all, in matters of government and religion; and that the diffusion of knowledge among the people is to be the instrument by which it is to be effected."
-- Thomas Jefferson; from letter to P. S. Dupont de Nemours (April 24, 1816)

Of course there was the odd exception:

"We have errors to correct; we have probably had too good an opinion of human nature in forming our confederation. Experience has taught us, that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures the best calculated for their own good, without the intervention of a coercive power. I do not conceive we can exist long as a nation without having lodged some where a power, which will pervade the whole Union in as energetic a manner"
-- George Washington; from letter to John Jay (Aug. 1, 1786)

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

I just wish I'd get a straight up answer but instead I get copy and paste off topic mish mash of words.

I like to bait her into jabbering like a monkey because lots of people read this forum and those with brains in their heads get an entertaining portrait of the addled conservative mind when they read, or try to read through, PC's posts.

--------------------------------------------------------------

I can't tell how many times I have read a post like this in response to a well-reasoned conservative argument.

This one is a bit more pompous...but still carries the main theme of any Left-wing Loon Pinhead response...it attacks the messenger and runs from the message.

And, this one is not profane like most Left-Wing Loon Pinhead responses. The writer can credit himself for that anyway.

Precisely! Leftists are slogan spouters. Examine the posts on this or any other thread written by leftists. Indeed, go to any forum on the Internet and examine the posts written by leftists there. Here's what you'll read: straw man, red herring, ad hominem.

Leftists don't make counterarguments that directly address the conservative's postulate, let alone follow or directly dispute the conservative's subsequent line of reasoning. This is true of even the more literally gifted. Don't let appearances fool you. They all come down to the same thing: straw man, red herring, ad hominem. Leftists are cultural relativists. Their ideology is nothing more than a collection of slogans cobbled together with sneer.

Lefty: "Classical liberalism is bull! It's benighted. Passé. Indeed, it's racist, xenophobic, bigoted, homophobic, the stuff of crackpots and addled minds."

Conservative: "Why is it these things?"

Lefty: "Are you daft? Classical liberalism is bull! It's benighted. Passé. Indeed, it's racist, xenophobic, bigoted, homophobic, the stuff of crackpots and addled minds."

Conservative: "No. The question was why is it these things?"

Lefty: "Because it's bull, you right-wing fascist! It's benighted. Passé. Indeed, it's racist, xenophobic, bigoted, homophobic, the stuff of crackpots and addled minds."

Ad nauseam. . . .

Lefty's ideology hovers in midair bottomed on nothing discernibly ontological but the unexamined pabulum of some utterly arbitrary, materialistic apriority or another. He doesn't proceed from first principles or adhere to the rules of logic as neither support his blather. On top of that, he's a pathological liar, a political sociopath. His conscience is seared as one turned over to a reprobate mind. Hence, he typically will not attempt to restate the conservative's argument by way of demonstrating that he rightly understands it in the first place, despite his personal bias. Objectivity? What's that? All is subjective.

The only thing Lefty gets right—due to the inescapable principle of identity that binds the minds of all—is that he disagrees with the conservative.

He recognizes that the conservative's A is not his B. But he seldom ever gets beyond that point.

 

[NYcarbineer]

By our very nature we will never live in the fantasy world of live and peace that liberals envision. We must not stand as part of the "world community" because that's what those who want to bring us down want. We are a great and powerful nation. We should look out for number1. Same applies to life. Why are my hard earned tax dollars going to support lazy people that have done nothing more than get pregnant?

Your tax dollars go to helping the poor because more people want to help the poor than do not.

My tax dollars go to militarism and imperialism because more people want to waste money and lives on that folly than do not.

Life will never adjust itself to suit you perfectly. You are naive to believe that.

You mean democracy will never adjust to suit you. That's a good reason for disposing of it. People should be able to make their own decisions about which causes to fund.

And what if most people decide that they want a democratic system?

 

[NYcarbineer]

Right. My bad. You silly children of America's decline and fall tendered your post as an insult . . . not a compliment owing to my learned and superior taste for the limited and divided government of inalienable human rights.

Carry on. . . .

It's the government that protects your rights. It's the power of the big central government to do such things as overturn unconstitutional gun control laws passed by the smaller governments of the states and localities that protects your rights. You owe the protection of your rights to big government.

Today, it's the government that makes your rights. It is within their power to take them just as easily. In what reality was that supposed to be the case? A form of government such as this one was what prompted Thomas Jefferson to say this:

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

There is no magic that can prevent a government from taking away your rights. For example,

what's to prevent the Republicans, if they had enough power, from amending the Constitution to end all abortion rights, and, to assure that same sex marriage is not a right?

 

[NYcarbineer]

"...unrestrained exercise of power...."


Bingo!

So you do want to take the position that the Congress and the Supreme Court have no power to restrain the executive branch?

Can you cite any sources from your vast library of books you've pretended to have read to support that assertion?

Can you prove they still can? Right now, Obama is making the case that the executive branch can and will act independently of Congress and the courts. He changes law when it suits him and grants amnesty when it suits him. The civilian population has no say so over their governance, as seen when our government picks random cities all across America to dump illegal immigrants. In that case, human nature runs contrary to governance. Human nature dictates that man must govern himself. If he does not, he can and will govern others according to his will, not the people's. That is the true essence of tyranny.

No. Tyranny is when the people in power can govern as they please with no legal recourse available to the governed to oppose that.

No such condition exists here, now.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Surely the impression you leave is one of an ignorant, dim-witted, pompous lefty who seems impressed by his own silliness. Carry on.

Would you like to defend her position? She can't. Her position is that there are no constitutional checks on executive power.

Go ahead. Show us how smart you and she are.

Actually, I can search this thread and show multiple times where she defended her position adroitly. You chose to ignore it out of hand, for want of attacking her character. That really shows how smart you are, Carbine. My only regret was not getting to this thread sooner.

I'll ask you the same question then that I asked Redfish (who immediately fled btw).

Since you want to defend the alleged brilliance of PC, and since I am in fact a liberal, then you explain, precisely, in detail, and supported by evidence,

what PC is accusing ME of in the opening of the OP:

Who would be more aware of human nature than ......human beings?
Yet, a large portion of the population is willing to remain oblivious to their own nature, or, at the least, to pretend to be unaware of same.

History reveals it....
Experience reveals it....

Liberals ignore it.

...and then, why she is correct in that accusation.

Explain and defend the above charge, in detail, and with evidence.

 

[NYcarbineer]

If Obama is ruling like a tyrant, what was all that rightwing crowing about last month over all the Supreme Court cases that supposedly went against the Obama administration?

What the **** kind of 'tyrant' only has as much power as the other branches of government allow him, according to their own capacity and jurisdiction?

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

By our very nature we will never live in the fantasy world of live and peace that liberals envision. We must not stand as part of the "world community" because that's what those who want to bring us down want. We are a great and powerful nation. We should look out for number1. Same applies to life. Why are my hard earned tax dollars going to support lazy people that have done nothing more than get pregnant?

Your tax dollars go to helping the poor because more people want to help the poor than do not.

My tax dollars go to militarism and imperialism because more people want to waste money and lives on that folly than do not.

Life will never adjust itself to suit you perfectly. You are naive to believe that.

See what I mean? Lefty never gets beyond A isn't B. NYcarbineer hasn't learned/understood anything of any value from this thread, and, as another said, it's as if he's never read a history book.

NYcarbineer, the conservative is not naïve. He's well aware of the fact that "[l]ife will never adjust itself to suit [one] perfectly." That's the whole point, infant.

And what you're complaining about in the above is the result of your political forbearers during the Progressive era of neo-liberal fascism stupidly undermining limited-divided government in the face of the corruption of human nature. What you're complaining about, as I told you before, though it flew right over your head, is the stupidity of empowering the government to directly tax income and conscript the people via military drafts!

Hello!

Classical liberals fought against these things, infant. Classical liberals understand the dangers of these things, infant. Classical liberals despise military adventurism, infant.

It's power-hungry infants like you who did these things to the Republic.

Naiveté is Lefty's middle name.